Listening to Prestige 488: Willie Wilson

This was Willie Wilson's only recording session. He had played in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, but had not recorded with them. He would die not long after this session was recorded. The 1961 session was originally recorded for Jazzline, but the label folded before the album could be released. It would come out in 1966, under Freddie Hubbard's name, in Europe from the Dutch Fontana label. Prestige released it under Duke Pearson's name in 1970, and Black Lion in 1988 under Hubbard's.

Yeah, there'd be no point in the subsequent releases coming out under Wilson's name. He was dead...and forgotten.

But he was respected enough by his peers to be able to call on some front line talent for his shot at the brass ring. In addition to Hubbard and Pearson, Pepper Adams is on board. So is Lex Humphries, who had been the original drummer with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet, and had worked with John Coltrane on the Giant Steps sessions (the tracks featuring Humphries were not included on the album, but did appear on a subsequent album called Alternate Takes). Bassist Thomas Howard is obscure, though he did record again with Pearson.

Maybe Howard was from Atlanta. That was the hometown of Pearson and Wilson. Pearson remembered him:

Willie and I grew up together from kindergarten in Atlanta. We also took piano lessons from the same teacher. We were as brothers and his death came as quite a shock to me. 

But no jazz journalist was interested enough in Wilson to probe Pearson for more stories about his friend, so this is all we have. A reputation in Atlanta of 70 years ago, a short time with Dizzy, and this album. I like to look into the lives of wonderful musicians whom fame has passed by, b

The Willie Wilson Sextet cut seven tunes on this August afternoon at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan. Because this wasn't a Bob Weinstock production, and they weren't frowning om retakes and reusing every scrap of tape, there are several takes of each cut. (We can thank Bell Sound for that, but not for the sacrilege they committed when they closed shop in 1976, and destroyed hundreds of priceless original masters.) Five of the tunes featured the sextet. The two Great American Songbook ballads on the session, "The Nearness of You" (Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington) and "Time After Time" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) were a quartet, Wilson and the rhythm section. In both of them, it's just Wilson and the rhythm section, and he shows himself capable of handling the front line on his own. He's warm and sensitive and romantic, and he swings.

But I really loved the sextet numbers. How could you go wrong, with Freddie Hubbard and Pepper Adams joining you? The format is your classic bop small group, ensemble playing on the head, solo solo solo, then the ensemble again. You know, that old cliched format that John Lewis killed off, and Miles Davis killed off, and John Coltrane killed off, but no one has ever really been able to kill off, because it can be a template for such wonderful music.

Pearson ("Miss Bertha D. Blues," also known as "Number 5"). Adams ("Apothegm") and Wilson ("Blues for Alvina") all contributed tunes to the session, and they also used the composing talents of Tommy Flanagan ("Minor Mishap," which has become something of a jazz standard) and Donald Byrd ("Lex"). but for my "Listen to One" I'll give you "Blues for Alvina," and Wilson's one chance to shine as composer before an early death and undeserved obscurity.

If you want to listen to more than one, which I strongly recommend, it takes some digging. "Willie Wilson Sextet" finds nothing, either on Spotify or YouTube. A search for "Willie Wilson Quartet" will take you to the two quartet numbers. You can find everything from the Prestige album on either Spotify or YouTube by searching "Duke Pearson Dedication" or "Duke Pearson" and the individual songs. Some searching under "Freddie Hubbard" and individual titles on YouTube will get you to the Black Lion cuts, though not necessarily all of them--each tune except for "The Nearness of You" and "Time after Time" is represented by two different takes. Or, as always, buy the music. The Prestige album is still readily available, and the Black Lion album is findable.

Fred Norsworthy, who engineered the session, is listed as producer on the Prestige release, titled Dedication! Black Lion founder Alan Bates gets producer credit for the Black Lion rerelease, called Minor Mishap. The European release on Fontana was titled Groovy!, so two of the titles included exclamation points.